Arkansas Blog

The ironic Jason Rapert open line

Let's open the line with this: The gay bashers at the Family Council slapped down their promised race card today, gathering black preachers with Bro. Jason Rapert to oppose same-sex marriage. They love LGBTQ sinners, the assembly insisted, just so long as they don't have equal rights in marriage, employment and so on. Tough love. The irony was thick enough to slice like ripe cheese. Black clergy opposing equal rights and due process of law for a mistreated minority.

Thanks to Chris Hicks for the Facebook photograph I borrow above to illustrate. (Notice lack of female participation? That's another disfavored minority in religious right churches.) The quote he places on the photo is not from today's event, but from an earlier Capitol conclave reported in The Nation that created an earlier furor on Rapert and minorities..

Don't know what the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. might say. But we do know what civil rights colossus Rep. John Lewis has said:

"I've heard the reasons for opposing civil marriage for same-sex couples. Cut through the distractions, and they stink of the same fear, hatred and intolerance I have known in racism and in bigotry."

Here's a side note from the Central Arkansas Transit Authority.
The public bus service today adopted some route changes and a passenger code of conduct, which you can read at the link. It occurred to me: They could require gay passengers to sit in the back of the bus. It is legal in Arkansas to discriminate against gay people. Our state civil rights act doesn't protect them. This coalition of religious leaders signaled today that back-of-the-bus status is OK for gays, if not for them.